This really explain a lot about the feeling of disconnect in our country.
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

There's more reasonably bright Americans than Canadians. It's why I wouldn't take it as the 51st state for any amount of money, we've got enough fucking socialists already thanks.

The first month hasn't been quite perfect but certainly full of highlights that are the first reasons for optimism in a once-great nation in quite a while.

And what specific time frame would that be?

Nearly one in four Canadians (24.6%) had a college certificate or diploma or similar credential as their highest level of education in 2021, above all other G7 countries and more than double the share in the United States (10.8%)

On top of that, Canadians live longer and are healthier. Average life expectancy for males in USA is 75.8 and 79.5 in Canada. That's a big difference.

The only thing Jon has a grasp of regarding Canada is Bret 'The Hitman' Hart

Where are you getting your education stats from?

This link shows much higher educational attainment in the US

Census Bureau Releases New Educational Attainment Data

Education level is beside the point. JIMGA's idea of smart or not is your political affiliation.

Saying it over and over doesn't make it true.

You're right, it was only pulling colleges, so a limited set of data. This one is a lot closer:

The share of the population aged 25 to 64 who had a college or university credential was 57.5% in Canada, higher than all other members of the G7. The other G7 countries had the following shares: 50.3% in the United States, 50.1% in the United Kingdom, 40.7% in France, 20.0% in Italy, 31.1% in Germany and 55.6% in Japan.

Something tells me this Zelenskyy meeting was a set-up.

Good god that was embarrassing for our country.

Don't fall into the mistake of confusing education with good sense.

Well crap. I don’t think we’ve seen that happen before.

Good luck Ukraine. I really, really hope you and NATOexUS are able to hold back the horde without US support or munitions.

Trump trying to extort Zelensky again this time in broad daylight.

Tsk tsk. Do you really know anyone who calls out idiots on his own side of the aisle more frequently than I do/have?

There are three primary causes for liberalism: ignorance, mental/emotional illness, plain ol' evil.

I don't usually try to pin down someone's cause(s), though I do tend to be generous and go with ignorance as the first option. Yeah, I know better but it's the easiest one to cure so that's the optimistic approach.

The problem is that Trump's definition of "peace" is for Ukraine to surrender. Imagine asking for 50% of a country's rare earth resources in exchange for what?

Not ceasing to exist on the map.

Not a big loss to the rest of the world perhaps but I'd have figured they might want to hold on to that.

Apparently not.

Y'know, thinking about it just a little more ... did nobody tell Z-man that there was a new sheriff in town? Specifically one that wasn't senile and wasn't looking to launder money.

Talk about arriving ill-prepared, yikes. Would be interesting to know if anyone tried (or didn't) to smarten him up beforehand or if he refused to listen to them or what.

Signs of a cult
Control: The group controls your finances, relationships, and choices.
Fear: The group uses fear to control members, such as threats of harm or shunning.
Isolation: The group encourages you to cut ties with friends and family.
Black-and-white thinking: The group promotes a simplistic worldview that positions itself as good and the outside world as evil.
No room for questions: The group discourages dissent and critical thinking.
Authoritarianism: The group has absolute authoritarianism without accountability.
Abuse: The group abuses members.
Beliefs: The group has unusual or extreme beliefs and rituals.
Leader: The group has a charismatic leader who claims to have all the answers.

Remember, dear readers, I'm a DeSantis guy more than a Trump guy.

You've never once, for example, heard/seen me use MAGA (aside from a group identifier) ... because I don't for a second believe that's actually possible. Slowing the swirl down the drain is the ceiling afaic, but that explains much of why I'm downright giddy at times about the first month or so of this administration. Definitely moves in the right direction for that.

First term was primarily marked by entertainment value -- which I noted before & during was about my high water hope for it -- this time I actually think he might slow the rate of descent.

Yeah, there's no difference between Republican and MAGA. They are the same.

The lead paint and leaded gas generation will believe anything. Maybe Zelensky should have bought some Trump crypto.

Ehhhh ... there's still plenty of worse-than-useless lightweights carrying around the (R) label.

They're all lightweight pussies incapable of the slightest independent action. There is no difference.

Their master won't allow them to have independent thought, otherwise they will be primaried.

You mean like typically anti-Trump governor in GA is threatening?

If they're doing good, good on them.
Still a lot of swamp draining to be done within the party tho.

The calls are coming from inside the house.

Things that definitely aren't mental illness: wishing harm to people that don't agree with you, wanting those same people hung, supporting someone that steals money from the people supporting him, cheering on people being fired from their jobs, having zero empathy for other humans, thinking Russia is the good guys, openly hoping for a dictator.

Let's not forget that Zelensky has gotten used to getting praised and butt kissed everywhere he comes. Combine that with that Trump loves to butt kiss and praise dictators. So yeah, it makes sense for pretend to be dictator Zelensky to expect support. But somehow Zelensky forgot that Trump's drooling only happens when the other person isn't an ally of the USA. Zelensky somehow didn't get the latest news that Trump in 2025 threatens to annex his allies whenever he gets the chance.

What is the alternative? I still can't get any pro-Ukraine folks to tell us what the plan is here. Ukraine is out of people who can fight.

This whole imperialist project with Ukraine will go down as historically bad. The blowback might be worse than the support of the Mujahideen. Biden gave one of the most corrupt countries on the planet an endless supply of weapons for years with no oversight. Forced them to fight and die. Then the next President rugpulled them at the end. So now you have a bunch of extremely far-right semi-terrorist organizations with access to weapons and a hatred of America. Doesn't typically play out well.

You can't put into words how bad a President Biden ended up being. All this could have been avoided.

Zelensky isn't an ally, he's a grifter (albeit on a fairly grand scale). That played well with the previous administration.

Projection much. Lol

If the reports saying that the WH press folks got to eat the lunch that was intended for Zelensky are accurate, this is even more fun.

At least Lindsay Graham appears capable of reading the room. He went from virtually bowing to Zelensky to " “Americans witnessing this would not want Zelensky to be their business partner including me.”

When you lose your leading sycophant, that can't be a good sign.

FAFO indeed

They're all grifters. Trump is just more open about the grift than others which is actually nice to see for a change.

I think part of the blowback on Democrats and establishment Republicans is that they come across condescending in all this. America doesn't care about democracy and freedom in Ukraine (nor anywhere for that matter). They aren't actually worried Putin will take over Europe. This was always about funneling hundreds of billions to defense companies. Only the biggest rubes fell for the talking points and even they started seeing through the scam recently.

I'd rather politicians just be honest about it all. If you don't have something to provide to America (or its wealthiest citizens), you're of no importance to us and we'll throw you aside. Kamala would do the same thing once Ukraine ran out of bodies to fight, she'd have just made up some bullshit about how we need peace or whatever when the money well ran dry.

Instead of media appearances, Zelensky should have read some history books to realize America ALWAYS fucks their allies over in the end. It's always been transactional.

Not sure what some people watched, but it wasn't Zelensky that looked bad in all of this, Trump and Vance metaphorically couldn't have fellated Putin any harder, but of course the foreplay to that was claiming Ukraine started the war.

I don't get, how in any bizarro world the president of a country that was invaded, unprovoked is the bad guy. And yes, he has his issues, but he shouldn't even be in this position at this point.

I think the real problem is that, unlike Netanyahu, Zelensky didn't offer Trump the opportunity to build luxury real estate on the Black Sea. Or maybe that's what Putin's offered Trump, which is why he wants to see Ukraine lose.

The Putin stuff is weird. Biden was the biggest fucking gift Putin could ever ask for. Their economy is stronger, they've forged a relationship with China, they figured out how to beat Western air defenses, and shifted most of Europe to the right because of the failed sanctions. Not to mention they've gotten most of the land they wanted anyway and fucked the United States out of a few hundred billion with baggage.

I really don't think Trump gives a flying fuck about Putin either way. This was revenge for the impeachment. It was revenge for Ukraine not giving him what he wanted when he was President. Something he felt he deserved after Ukraine gave Biden something he wanted when he was VP (investigation into Burisma to go away).

Trump's a horribly corrupt guy but this insistence he's working for Putin has been a dead end path for neocons for almost a decade. It's a complete misunderstanding of who Trump is and what he cares about.

They aren't out of people that can fight. They project nearly a million people on the battlefield and exclude anyone below 25 that isn't a volunteer. They can still fight. They just need to move the draft age down. Honestly, if they can't stomach that then they probably deserve whatever deal Putin and Trump come up with, but if they do mobilize the young then both Europe and the US need to step up. Europe with boots and US with technology. I believe that if you let Russia keep doing this and getting away with it that they aren't going to stop and the money sink will never end. What happens when they go for the Baltics or Poland? We would be fully mobilized. We are at a point in Ukraine, maybe a couple of years ago more than now, where a little to big nudge would push Russia back to Moscow fairly quickly. Once that happens they will be the ones making a favorable deal.

NATO either fights this war or they are going to be forced to fight another one. And then another one.

We fucked this war up with all our conditions for our equipment. Telling them they couldn't use them offensively (and in Russia until they had suffered massive losses) was a major blunder.

Pure fantasy. You're not pushing Russia back to Moscow. They're dragging 50 year olds off the street to fight in Ukraine. And who the fuck are you to demand a bunch of 20 year olds who had no say in this war have to now go and die for your imperial desires?

The war is over. Russia won. Your plan failed. Ukraine should have negotiated peace in 2022 when they had leverage. It sucks that Biden, Boris, and other morons chose such a disastrous path.


No one in this country wants to die for a piece of land in Eastern Europe that has nothing to do with us. They are taking volunteers if you're up for it. But I'm guessing you want other people to die for your cause.

Almost like the goal wasn't to win but to have a prolonged conflict where we could funnel hundreds of billions to defense companies over the next couple decades without having to have actual skin in the game.

This sounds awfully conspiratorial. If the US actually was just attempting to assist Ukraine from an invasion, what would look any different from the current situation?

we are seeing in this thread how extreme right wing and extreme left wing, somehow meet in the middle (of looney land)

we once had the axis of evil. I propose we call the Jon/Rainmaker coalition the Horseshoe of Horseshit ;)

I don't think you have to be far-left or far-right to see that the whole Ukraine thing has been an utter disaster. You'd think after being wrong this many times you'd be used to it.

If anything, Trump handed you a gift here. You can now blame the failure of your policies on him instead of yourselves. Imagine having to explain this all under Kamala.

Because helping a nation survive multiple years with no American boots on the ground when it was believed that without assistance they would last weeks at MOST is "utter disaster".

You are so full of shit your eyes are brown.

And to correct Rainmaker's alternate reality where we "handed Ukraine weapons without oversight" one of the problems for Ukraine is that we've actually STOPPED them from hitting targets behind the Russian Lines, because we didn't want to antagonize Russia. I'm sure you'll ignore that fact just like you ignore all the facts that might break into your alternate-world fantasies. (BTW, Trump just removed oversight on possible warcrimes by the Israeis using US supplied munitions.. yet another thing where the facts don't matter to you except what you WANT to believe is true in your feverish punch drunk mind)

Jon is Jon, the old joke I made of him being "slightly to the right of Atilla the Hun" is on show here, but Rainmaker, you have been parading your alternate reality here on Ukraine/Russia and Israel/Palestine for months, and you are a very special kind of idiot. Are you really surprised that people are calling you out in your attempts to conflate black and white (if not completely reverse it in your reality).

You didn't help them survive. They lost, hundreds of thousands of people are dead, their neighbors to the West are more right-wing now, and Russia is stronger than it was before. You delayed the inevitable at the expense of lives and geopolitical strength.

And your "no American boots on the ground" is telling. You viewed Ukrainians as cannon fodder. You forced them to die so you could feel like you were helping. Complete and utter cowardice and the reason the neoliberal project has failed. If you truly thought this was important, you'd demand American troops on the ground.

I'm not demanding anything. I'm simply stating if they want to have a country it's time to fight. If they don't want a country then fine, surrender. If they aren't serious about the war I'm not really sure why we should be.


I 100% agree. At what point did I say American boots hit the ground? I said Europe needs to step up if they want something done here. There should be European boots on the ground if they are serious about halting Russia. If Russia was invading my state I assure you I would be out there with a rifle. They aren't invading my country or state.